Authentic Communication

We can never guarantee how well we will be understood by another person. We are all walking around in separate realities, trying to make sense of life through our interactions with others. Trying to strike a balance between diplomacy and self interest, often concerned about how we’ll be perceived. The fact is, we never know how well someone else will connect with what we are saying. Depending on where they are psychologically and emotionally at the time, the result will be different.

However, our experience of an interaction is always better when we act authentically and the key to acting authentically is trusting ourselves to do so.

What gets in the way of authentic communication is our concern that we won’t be properly understood. Instead of reaching out to people and reacting to them from a clear mind, we cloud our heads with thoughts of judgement, criticism and vulnerability. Rather than operating from clarity, we do so from confusion. We worry about how we will appear and what someone is going to think of us. We stumble through, second guess ourselves, regret what we’ve said.

When we are at peace, communication is easy. The right thing to say and do comes naturally. When we are anxious and stressed, we are not at peace with ourselves. We are not operating from a place of trust in ourselves. We are insecure, concerned that we have it wrong, feeling forced into confrontation and nervous about saying the right thing.

From here we can learn from our mistakes and move forwards differently. To do this we must let go of any self-recriminations, frustrations and regrets that we are holding onto from previous encounters. What is done is done. The best we can do is move on, understanding that we have the ability to communicate authentically in future and allowing ourselves to learn from our previous encounters how not to communicate.

Life is a constant learning curve. Let’s rejoice in this and celebrate the good fortune that allows us to see where we have gone wrong in the past and try a different way in the future. Let’s remember that we all have access to spiritual wellbeing, clarity of thought and peace of mind. When we operate from this understanding, life goes more smoothly. We let go of the demands and concerns of our ego and we communicate with others authentically. Let us try to remember that things don’t go so well when we operate from worry and stress and insecurity. If we just take a breathe and allow ourselves to drop out of that space before we reach out to and react to others, we will have more pleasant interactions regardless of how others perceive and experience us.

We will find that when we do this, we feel at peace with our interactions, however they turn out because we know that we have acted from feelings of peace and wellbeing rather than despair, distraction, anxiety and distress that take us away from our true, authentic selves and reduce our ability to communicate authentically.